July 4 • 2019 17
jn
“I would highly recommend assigning a
designated digital executor in your will
so your survivors are able to manage your
technology as simply as possible.”
— RABBI JASON MILLER
with login credentials and contact
people for those accounts. This
is especially important to have
regarding financial accounts.
I found it was helpful to send out
notifications from my father’
s email
address to the representatives of his
financial accounts alerting them
of his death and that I would be
requesting access to those accounts.
This simple notification sped up
closing out or transferring digital
accounts. Sending notifications to
individuals who recently sent email
messages to the deceased’
s email
accounts is also helpful before
closing out any email accounts to
let them know why their messag-
es went unanswered. It’
s helpful
to keep email accounts open and
managed for at least a year as this
will help to close registrations,
memberships or subscriptions.
DIGITAL DATA
Determining which files, email
messages, photos and videos to
keep is a tricky decision. The first
thing I realized was that my father
maintained a lot of backup versions
of his data — both locally on hard
drives as well as in the cloud. This
redundant backup situation meant
that it took a lot of time to deter-
mine which files were duplicates.
When deciding which photos and
videos to keep, I realized I already
had many of those in my own col-
lection, so I didn’
t want to keep
duplicates.
You don’
t want to delete digital
data if you don’
t need to so the rule
of thumb should be to keep files
until you’
re completely certain you
(or future generations) won’
t want
them. It might be wise to keep all
digital data for at least a year fol-
lowing the death. For me, it was
helpful to first organize the data
(including my father’
s vast digital
photo collection) before determin-
ing which files to delete.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Managing a deceased loved one’
s
social media accounts can be one
of the most important tasks after
their death. This is relatively new
territory for survivors, and social
media companies only recently
created protocols to handle this.
Most of the major social media
companies (Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.) spell
out the steps necessary for a desig-
nated survivor to either put these
accounts into an archival mode or
to shut them down. The instruc-
tions for this are either outlined in
the terms of service or in the help
section. Facebook’
s ability to put
a deceased person’
s account into
“Remembering” mode has become
common and is a useful way to
inform others of your loved one’
s
death.
Managing a deceased loved one’
s
digital life is a big responsibility.
For me, it has been a rewarding
experience as I have tried to orga-
nize my late father’
s digital files
over the past few months. It’
s given
me a new perspective on his life
and allowed me to grieve his loss
while searching through his digital
photo and video library. This expe-
rience has also allowed me to help
my father after his death, as I con-
tinue to try to fulfill the command-
ment of honoring one’
s father. ■
Rabbi Jason Miller is the son of the late
Gary D. Miller, a tech-savvy futurist and
software designer, who founded Miller
Systems in 1994. Rabbi Jason is an educa-
tor and entrepreneur, who is the president
of Access Technology in West Bloomfield.
Follow him on Twitter at @RabbiJason.
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